This paper is part of my Master's Thesis under the same title submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts; Nationalism Studies Program; Central European University; Budapest 2020
The paper looks at the state policy towards Stalin and his legacy on the example of I.B. Stalin State Museum in Gori and contributes to the wider academic inquiry into the state orchestrated strategies, meanings and forms of representation of Stalin in Georgia today. The Restored Museum of Avlabari Underground Printing House named after Stalin and associated with Bolshevik heritage in Georgian public memory is brought as an asymmetric comparative case. The question is raised on why the state not a homogenous actor itself remains passive vis-à-vis Stalin State Museum while the concept and the structure of the Restored Museum of Avlabari Underground Printing House will soon be completely revisited.
Both Museums deal with Stalin, both of them either are, or at least were until very recently spaces of social encounter, one of Gori locals and another of Georgian communists. However, the processes of meaning-making run differently in each case and state actors hold different agendas vis-à-vis each of them or have no agenda at all in very different ways.
Through semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observation and the analysis of the preliminary concepts on the future of Stalin State Museum the following conclusions were drawn: State actors appropriates the arguments made by critically disposed historians on contextualizing Stalin and his political legacy.
The strategy of juxtaposing the mainstream narrative of the exhibition by its counter narrative aimed at providing the objective commentary as the first important step to modify the existing exhibition has its special application inside the Museum. It is both applied to reimagine Stalin as a complex historical figure and to rationalize the state violence blending Gulag and the Great Purges in a larger trans-national context.
State remains passive vis-à-vis Stalin Museum in Gori because the way the national elements: Stalin's biography, the building, the community engagement with it create cultural meanings that are functional today. These elements are missing in case of the Restored Museum of Avlabari Underground Printing House. The place now needs to be transformed into the true site of national memory telling the progressive history of typography in Georgia. In both cases we witness the attempts to alienate the dark sides of the communist past.
